Only In The Movies
by Tumblr Ate My Soul
Summary: Ten snapshots from ten characters' lives, set throughout time (AU, though I tried to make it as close to canon). Please review.


A/N: This is the shuffle thing, might be AU at points (I'm pretty sure it is). Also, the songs shouldn't be taken literally, they served as just pointers.

Please, review,

love,

TAMS

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**ANYA (Set sometime in the past, before she got to Sunnydale)**

_Good Charlotte – Breaking Apart Her Heart_

She looks at all the women whose wishes she grants and she's disgusted with their weakness, the fact they just let men break them like that. She vows never to do the 'human emotion thing' and she's on a good track. She's a powerful vengeance demon and the demon world fears her. She can shift universes and break even the most powerful spells, all in the name of revenge. And she understands all the anger and thinks she's invincible. She's the one that does the dumping. No man will ever break her (at least not again).

**GILES (Set in Season 1)**

_System of a down – Chop Suey!_

His days are the same, always the same. The kids bring a dose of excitement to his same old life and he's not sure if he likes that, remembering the last time his life was exciting. So he wakes up and pulls on the persona of a mild librarian every morning; and he sees his father blinking at him from the mirror and every glass of scotch he dares look into every evening. And, every night, he remembers his own rebellion, spirit and desire to just do something. And every daybreak finds him desperately trying to make his own body pretend it slept the night before. And he might be dying, step by step, breath by breath, but he's still dying with people around him and that counts for something, doesn't it?

**ANGELUS (Set in Season 2)**

_Plus 44 – When Your Heart Stops Beating_

The girl has hair like liquid fire and the colours shining in it almost distract him from the Slayer. He wants her blood, though. He tells himself it's because she was so nice and friendly to his souled counterpart, discards the notion of wanting nothing less than to posses her for all eternity. It scares him, even, the fact that hearing her moan Xander's name in her sleep makes him want to wring the boy's neck more than he usually does and then posses her in the boys blood. He can smell her power, night after night, just lying dormant in her blood and he wants that power all for himself. Wants to keep that colourful hair close, too, and, if it has to come with her head, then so be it. He might turn her one of these days; he's just waiting for her to fall.

**ANGEL (Set in Season 3)**

_Enrique Iglesias – I Have Always Loved You_

When he's not Angelus anymore, again; when he's cursed with a soul, again; that's when he realises just how much he loves her and just how bad they are for each other. He breaks up with her 'for her own good' but he knows it's a lie because he's afraid for her as much as he's afraid of her. He knows, though, that it always was Buffy and it always will be Buffy, for all eternity and more. And, hell, if anyone knows about eternity, it's him. So he hopes for another life, another chance with her, even if he has to wait almost four centuries again.

**TARA (Set during Once More With Feeling)**

_Frank Sinatra – That Old Black Magic_

Willow loves her, she knows. And she loves Willow. And with love like theirs, who could ever stand in their way? Still, it terrifies her, Willow terrifies her. Because she's scary and powerful and so much more than she deserves. It's hard for her to let Willow go, though. It's hard to let her know how scary her power can be. Because she only exists for Willow and she only lives for Willow and she'll only ever love Willow. And, when they sleep together, when they touch, when they make love, well, fear's just about the furthest thing from her mind.

**XANDER (Set after Xander and Anya's failed wedding)**

_Cake – Going The Distance_

His heart thumps as he remembers what he just did. He left. Left the love of his life on their wedding day. And now he's got nowhere to go. He loves her, he knows, but he doesn't want to end up like his parents, either and that's a much stronger compulsion. He knows Will understands and he knows they'll be friends forever but he's scared for Anya now and doesn't care about Willow or Buffy or Dawn much. Anya's the one that used to be a vengeance demon and that used to hate and wallow in misery and he knows she'll soon be lost forever. So he's running and he drives on all the love he has for her but it's still not far enough. He's just so tired and so he stops for a while but then he's up again, running away from himself.

**BUFFY (Set before they all find out she's been sleeping with Spike)**

_Rob Mills – Miss Vanity_

She knows it's selfish, knows it shouldn't be that way. Knows life shouldn't be that way. Still, she embraces her own selfishness because it's kept her alive so far and she wouldn't have been able to stay sane if she weren't so selfish. She knows she leans on them too much and she knows she's using Spike's affection the wrong way but she knows it's only a matter of time 'till she's gone (again) and a new Slayer takes her place and everyone forgets. And then, they'll praise her for her selflessness and she won't be around to feel ashamed. Because Xander's selfless and Willow is selfless and Spike and Tara; her?...she couldn't really say 'yeah, y'know what, thanks but no thanks', could she? No, of course not. She tried, didn't she, though? And that shows how selfish she is, too. But she loves her life and loves her friends and feels so sorry for forcing them into all this. And she'll give her all to this cause they're fighting for because she owes it to them and to Dawn and Giles and to her late mother and, screw the world, she only wanted to be normal.

**SPIKE (Set right after Willow kills Warren and it might be a little AU)**

_Jimmy Eat World – Pain_

She doesn't love him but she's still pushing towards the relationship, the thing they share and he knows it. He keeps trying to break it off, she keeps trying to break it off. They're still together though, well, as together as one could call them, and it breaks him a bit. It's day-by-day, the way he lives, sometimes even hour-by-hour or minute-by-minute and he hates her for it and he still loves her and it's all so screwed up and he wonders what he did to deserve this kind of suffering. Because he very well knows she'll never love him, he knows no one will ever love him. He'd still kill for her, he does, every day, and he can understand Red when she breaks because love is powerful and it hurts but the lack of it hurts more.

**WILLOW (Starts from when she tried to end the world and continues into the future after the finale)**

_Andrew Bird – Measuring Cups_

They're judging, she knows. They're all judging. They have no right to, though, she knows. Why is she the only one not allowed to suffer? Why? And she could have been so much more, she knows, could have done so much more. Now, her story only makes her cringe. She tells it years later to a little girl, abandoned, just like her, and all of her pain, all of the wallowing in her past is lost in the girl's fascination with the fairytale her life could have seemed like to an untrained eye. The girl belongs to her, she decides, and she'll start over and be happy and the two of them will shine like stars. Years pass and the girl reminds her of...someone she has forgotten, a child, she thinks. And she reminds herself of...well, someone else. And when a man walks by while she's walking with her girl (no, that doesn't sound quite right, does it?) one late evening, his bleached blond hair gleaming in the moonlight and the smell of leather and cigarettes washing over her, she clenches the girl's hand even though she can't quite remember why. He turns and she just stares into his eyes (blue, so blue...oh, goodness, so blue) and then he says her name and she can hear the little voice in her head scream out 'Spike' in return and she knows he's someone who used to be important before. Recognition shines in his eyes. Compassion shines, too, so he introduces himself as William Ashton (and she has to admit it sounds familiar). The girl adores him (just like...someone) and he lingers around for days, weeks, months. And then he's gone but she can't forget all the memories he brought back this time. She thinks it might have been payback but she's not sure what for.

**DAWN (Set after the finale, years in the future, undetermined time period)**

_Hey Monday – Josey_

She's all alone, somewhere far, far away from Buffy and Sunnydale but the demons are still there. The demons are everywhere and there are things she can't un-see. So she steals like she did when she was a teen (she's better now, though, she doesn't get caught), she drinks more than she remembers Spike drinking and she sleeps around. And she never spends more than a week in the same place. It sometimes reminds her of Faith (the fake memories being quite particular in that instance) so she drinks some more, to forget. She wakes up one day and realises she might be pregnant and the first person she thinks of is Willow so she tracks her down. It takes months, almost over a year, and she leaves a fragile little girl on Will's doorstep. She's gone in seconds and, years later, when she finally finds her sister, she just cries for days. And she never wonders about her little girl or Willow but she drinks even more and lets Buffy take care of everything.

**FAITH (Set years after the finale, undetermined time period)**

_Ed Sheeran – Be Like You_

She's all alone in the end, like she always is. And she stops resenting Buffy somewhere along the way and starts questioning her own life, starts wondering why no one ever stuck around, why no one ever loved her. There's always this short happy period and then they get to know her and it's all broken again and she's all alone again. She runs into Oz, years down the road, and they're both alone so they decide on being alone together. And it works for a while, he plays guitar in some shady bar and she slays vamps and sells makeup and they don't mention their pasts and then, months later, there's a flash of red hair in the mass and, days later, he's just gone. Her heart breaks and she cries for the first time since, well, some time, she thinks. He's still got the same number, which she finds out weeks later when she drunk-dials him in the early hours of the morning and he answers. And she tells him she loves him and then promptly passes out. She wakes up to the smell of breakfast and the smell of him and she hears him before she sees him and he says he loves her too. They continue existing together, day in and day out, and she realises not everyone always leaves her.


End file.
